The following relates to the illumination arts, lighting arts, solid-state lighting arts, and related arts.
Integral incandescent and halogen lamps are designed as direct “plug-in” components that mate with a lamp socket via a threaded Edison base connector (sometimes referred to as an “Edison base” in the context of an incandescent light bulb), a bayonet-type base connector (i.e., bayonet base in the case of an incandescent light bulb), or other standard base connector to receive standard electrical power (e.g., 110 volts a.c., 60 Hz in the United States, or 220V a.c., 50 Hz in Europe, or 12 or 24 or other d.c. voltage). The integral lamp is constructed as a unitary package including any components needed to operate from the standard electrical power received at the base connector. In the case of integral incandescent and halogen lamps, these components are minimal, as the incandescent filament is typically operable using the standard 110V or 220V a.c., or 12V d.c., power, and the incandescent filament operates at high temperature and efficiently radiates excess heat into the ambient. In such lamps, the base of the lamp is simply the base connector, e.g. the Edison base in the case of an “A”-type incandescent light bulb.
Some integral incandescent or halogen lamps are constructed as omni-directional light sources which are intended to provide substantially uniform intensity distribution versus angle in the optical far field, greater than 5 or 10 times the linear dimension of the light source, or typically greater than about 1 meter away from the lamp, and find diverse applications such as in desk lamps, table lamps, decorative lamps, chandeliers, ceiling fixtures, and other applications where a uniform distribution of light in all directions is desired.
With reference to FIG. 1, a coordinate system is described which is used herein to describe the spatial distribution of illumination generated by a lamp intended to produce omnidirectional illumination. The coordinate system is of the spherical coordinate system type, and is described in FIG. 1 with reference to a lamp L, which in this illustrated embodiment is an “A”-type incandescent light bulb with an Edison base EB, which may for example be an E25, E26, or E27 lamp base where the numeral denotes the outer diameter of the screw turns on the base EB, in millimeters. For the purpose of describing the far field illumination distribution, the lamp L can be considered to be located at a point L0, which may for example coincide with the location of the incandescent filament. Adopting spherical coordinate notation conventionally employed in the geographic arts, a direction of illumination can be described by an elevation or latitude coordinate θ and an azimuth or longitude coordinate φ. However, in a deviation from the geographic arts convention, the elevation or latitude coordinate θ used herein employs a range [0°, 180°] where: θ=0° corresponds to “geographic north” or “N”. This is convenient because it allows illumination along the direction θ=0° to correspond to forward-directed light. The north direction, that is, the direction from the point L0 through geographic north, θ=0°, is also referred to herein as the optical axis. Using this notation, θ=180° corresponds to “geographic south” or “S” or, in the illumination context, to backward-directed light. The elevation or latitude θ=90° corresponds to the “geographic equator” or, in the illumination context, to sideways-directed light.
With continuing reference to FIG. 1, for any given elevation or latitude θ an azimuth, or longitude coordinate, φ can also be defined, which is everywhere orthogonal to the elevation or latitude θ. The azimuth or longitude coordinate φ has a range [0°, 360°], in accordance with geographic notation. At precisely north or south, that is, at θ=0° or at θ=180° (in other words, along the optical axis), the azimuth or longitude coordinate has no meaning, or, perhaps more precisely, can be considered degenerate. Another “special” coordinate is θ=90° which defines the plane transverse to the optical axis which contains the light source (or, more precisely, contains the nominal position of the light source for far field calculations, for example the point L0 in the illustrative example shown in FIG. 1). Achieving uniform light intensity across the entire longitudinal span φ=[0°, 360°] is typically not difficult, because it is straightforward to construct a light source with rotational symmetry about the optical axis (that is, about the axis θ=0°). For example, the incandescent lamp L suitably employs an incandescent filament located at coordinate center L0 which can be designed to emit substantially omnidirectional light, thus providing a uniform illumination distribution respective to the azimuth φ for any latitude. A lamp that provides uniform illumination distribution respective to the azimuth φ for any latitude is sometimes referred to as providing an axially symmetrical light distribution.
However, achieving ideal omnidirectional illumination respective to the elevational or latitude coordinate θ is generally not practical. For example, the “A” type incandescent light bulb L includes the Edison base EB which lies on the optical axis “behind” the light source position L0, and blocks backward illumination so that the incandescent lamp L does not provide ideal omnidirectional light respective to the latitude coordinate θ exactly up to θ=180°. Nonetheless, commercial incandescent lamps can provide illumination across the latitude span θ=[0°, 135°] which is uniform to within about ±20% as specified in the proposed Energy Star standard for integral LED Lamps (2nd draft, May 9, 2009; hereinafter “proposed Energy Star standard”) promulgated by the U.S. Department of Energy. This is generally considered an acceptable illumination distribution uniformity for an omnidirectional lamp, although there is some interest in extending this span still further, such as to a latitude span of θ=[0°, 150°] with and possibly with a better ±10% uniformity. Such lamps with substantial uniformity over a large latitude range (for example, about θ=[0°, 120°] or more preferably about θ=[0°, 135°] or still more preferably about θ=[0°, 150°]) are generally considered in the art to be omnidirectional lamps, even though the range of uniformity is less than [0°, 180°].
There is interest in developing omnidirectional LED replacement lamps that operate as direct “plug-in” replacements for integral incandescent or halogen lamps. However, substantial difficulties have heretofore hindered development of LED replacement lamps with desired omnidirectional intensity characteristics. One issue is that, compared with incandescent and halogen lamps, solid-state lighting technologies such as light emitting diode (LED) devices are highly directional by nature. For example, an LED device, with or without encapsulation, typically emits in a directional Lambertian spatial intensity distribution having intensity that varies with cos(θ) in the range θ=[0°, 90°] and has zero intensity for θ>90°. A semiconductor laser is even more directional by nature, and indeed emits a distribution describable as essentially a beam of forward-directed light limited to a narrow cone around θ=0°.
Another issue is that unlike an incandescent filament, an LED chip or other solid state lighting device typically cannot be operated efficiently using standard 110V or 220V a.c. power. Rather, on-board electronics are typically provided to convert the a.c. input power to d.c. power of lower voltage amenable for driving the LED chips. As an alternative, a series string of LED chips of sufficient number can be directly operated at 110V or 220V, and parallel arrangements of such strings with suitable polarity control (e.g., Zener diodes) can be operated at 110V or 220V a.c. power, albeit at substantially reduced power efficiency. In either case, the electronics constitute additional components of the lamp base as compared with the simple Edison base used in integral incandescent or halogen lamps.
Heat sinking is yet another issue for omnidirectional replacement LED lamps. Heat sinking is employed because LED devices are highly temperature-sensitive as compared with incandescent or halogen filaments. The LED devices cannot be operated at the temperature of an incandescent filament (rather, the operating temperature should be around 100° C. or preferably lower). The lower operating temperature also reduces the effectiveness of radiative cooling. In a usual approach, the base of the LED replacement lamp further includes (in addition to the Edison base connector and the electronics) a relatively large mass of heat sinking material positioned contacting or otherwise in good thermal contact with the LED device(s).
The combination of electronics and heat sinking results in a large base that blocks “backward” illumination, which has heretofore substantially limited the ability to generate omnidirectional illumination using an LED replacement lamp. The heat sink in particular preferably has a large volume and also large surface area in order to dissipate heat away from the lamp by a combination of convection and radiation.